Chinese Entertainment: Starting from 1996

Chapter 545 Untitled
"Joker" actually mainly tells the story of the protagonist Arthur Fleck who was forced to become a clown step by step from being a cowardly person.

This kind of transition is not easy to grasp. In addition to the plot needing to be reasonable, the actors' performances also need to convince the audience.

Especially for a character like Arthur, who hides a crazy heart under a seemingly normal appearance, how to show his madness step by step is a great test of acting skills.

Almost the entire movie focuses on the male protagonist, so for the actor who plays the male protagonist, the entire movie is also a personal show for him to showcase his acting skills.

Therefore, the choice of the male lead is crucial. Although Joaquin Phoenix is ​​well-known, he also performed this role very well in the original time and space, and even won the Oscar for Best Actor for this role.

But after all, the time was advanced by six or seven years, and he would not feel at ease unless Liu Zhou went to see it in person.

This movie is also very important to Liu Zhou, as he is planning to use it to win an Oscar.

However, Joaquin Phoenix did not disappoint Liu Zhou. He is indeed a talented actor like his brother, and this kind of talent is something others cannot envy.

When most actors encounter a role, they understand it through experience or reading related materials, but Joaquin Phoenix sits there and clears his mind waiting for inspiration to appear.

Besides, he had done some preparation for this role in the past few days, and inspiration came to him suddenly.

Whether it's the hero's kindness and cowardice in the early stage, or the struggle of transformation in the middle stage, or the little bit of madness in the end, Joaquin Phoenix performed very well.

Especially since he was still shirtless, but just looking at his eyes, one would subconsciously overlook this point.

I have to admit that Joaquin Phoenix is ​​indeed the best actor Liu Zhou has encountered in his more than ten years as a director.

So there was no need to hesitate. Liu Zhou no longer invited alternative candidates to audition and directly asked the Warner people to negotiate the contract with Joaquin Phoenix.

Joaquin Phoenix also liked this role very much, so the two sides didn't haggle for long and signed the actor contract within two days.

Although Joaquin Phoenix is ​​not a top Hollywood star, he is also quite famous. He has been nominated for the Best Actor Oscar twice for "Gladiator" in 2000 and "Walk the Line" in 2005.

If he hadn't been so eccentric and didn't give much respect to the Oscars, he would most likely have won the Oscar for Best Actor in 2006.

In "Walk the Line", he plays the famous country music singer Johnny Cash, but he is a character who appears sunny on stage but extreme off stage.

Such a severely divided character is not easy to play, not to mention that Joaquin Phoenix was not good at interpreting "sunshine" before.

But he still gave an extremely outstanding performance and became the favorite for the 2006 Oscar for Best Actor.

Many professional media and film critics gave very high praise, believing that if the Oscar for Best Actor was not awarded to Joaquin Phoenix, no one would think that there was a problem with Joaquin's acting skills, because the facts are there.

But no one expected that Joaquin Phoenix would publicly announce that he was going on vacation and would miss the Oscars ceremony.

In the end, of course, he missed the Oscar for Best Actor and left a very bad impression on the Oscars.

This also led to Joaquin Phoenix being unpopular with the Oscars for a long time in the future. He was nominated again in 2013 for "The Master". Although he came to the scene, he was just a runner-up.

However, in 2019, he came to the Oscars again with "Joker", and this time his performance conquered most of the judges, allowing him to successfully win the Best Actor award.

Leonardo DiCaprio was so angry when he saw this. He became famous all over the world because of "Titanic", but the Oscar did not like a pretty boy like him.

So even though "Titanic" won a record 14 Oscar nominations, he didn't even get a nomination for Best Actor.

How could he, being young and energetic at that time, endure such humiliation, so he scolded Oscar in public.

But what you can't get will always make you restless, not to mention that winning an Oscar is the dream of most actors, and Leonardo is no exception.

At that time, he had both fame and fortune, but lacked the recognition of an Oscar.

So in order to win the award, Leonardo embarked on an 18-year journey of licking the Oscars.

After that, he looked for more mature roles in the movies he starred in, because he knew that Oscar didn't like his pretty boy image.

He also often collaborates with Martin Scorsese, a famous Hollywood director who is very favored by the Oscars. What's more, he even customizes movies that suit the Oscars' tastes.

But it was of no use. Although he was not denied a nomination by the Oscars, he was always a runner-up.

It wasn't until 2016 that he finally won the Oscar for Best Actor for "The Revenant", which made his wish come true.

"The Revenant" is actually a movie specially tailored for him to win awards. The whole movie is almost a one-man show, and he also struggles on a deserted island and suffers a lot.

If you don't give him a hint, you wouldn't be able to recognize him as Leonardo in the movie.

But his hard work was not in vain. The Oscars may have felt his sincerity and were moved by his dog-licking spirit, and finally awarded him the Best Actor award.

So he saw that Joaquin Phoenix was so disrespectful to Oscar, but in the end there was no special expression, but Oscar still gave him the Best Actor trophy regardless of the past.

Looking back, I realized that it took me nearly twenty years and so much hardship to win the Golden Globe, while others can just make movies when they want to and retire when they want to, and can win the Best Actor award by producing a good work.

So he felt mixed emotions for a moment. If he had not won the award, he might have been so jealous that his eyes turned red.

Leonardo is still licking the Oscar now. I wonder if he will be hit if Joaquin Phoenix really wins the Oscar for Best Actor next year with "Joker".

In the end, Joaquin Phoenix signed his name on the actor contract for a salary of 12 million US dollars.

With him officially becoming a member of the "Joker" crew, the preparations for the entire project have come to an end.

However, in order to be more fully prepared, Liu Zhou finally decided to start filming on April 15th.

Liu Zhou doesn't need to worry too much at this time, just leave the rest to the producer.

The reason why producers in Hollywood have more say than directors is because they are responsible for more things, while directors just need to focus on filming.

Taking advantage of this period of time, Liu Zhou also returned to China.

It has been almost a month since he came to North America. There are some things piled up in the country that he needs to deal with personally, and he will have to stay in North America for at least two months.

Although "Joker" does not require special effects, filming in North America is not as easy as shooting day and night in China, so Liu Zhou also arranged two months for the filming.

Before that, he also needed to arrange some domestic affairs. After returning to China, he first spent a week dealing with the affairs of Sina Group and Zhoushan Literature. Because these two companies have made significant moves this year, he spent more time on them.

Zhou Shan Literature’s most important project this year is the expansion of Bilibili.

Under Liu Zhou's instructions, Bilibili was established two years ahead of schedule, even earlier than Bilibili.

Thanks to the planning made by Liu Zhou, the positioning of Bilibili founded by Zhou Shan Literature is very precise, focusing on anime series and two-dimensional peripheral culture.

Unlike Station A, which has gained traffic due to the two-dimensional culture, it has placed its focus on games, entertainment, gossip, etc., and the two-dimensional cultural content has gradually decreased.

Therefore, due to the early rise of Station B, Station A has already become popular, or it is very likely that it has not even appeared.

The gathering place for 2D fans was initially on Bilibili. After two or three years of development, Bilibili has become the only 2D community and video website in China.

Its traffic is no less than that of some current mainstream video websites.

Because this is a vertical video website, and Zhoushan Literature has not promoted it much, allowing it to develop quietly. Therefore, if you are not a person who pays attention to the two-dimensional world, you will not know about this video website at all.

However, although Bilibili is unknown to the outside world, it has considerable fame in the industry, especially among some investment institutions, which had not realized that a video website had come from behind and surpassed it.

This undoubtedly made their eyes light up, it was simply a new piece of cake.

However, just when they were about to take action, they investigated and found out that Bilibili was actually a company under Liu Zhou, which made them feel as uncomfortable as if they had eaten a fly.

They thought it appeared suddenly, but unexpectedly it was Liu Zhou's company. In this case, they should forget about investing because they are not short of money at all.

So they can only drool over Bilibili, and they have never thought about investing in a similar video website.

Moreover, some of their investment institutions have even put it into action. After all, people in China are very good at following trends. Since the two-dimensional websites can be established, of course some people will follow suit.

But later they found that it was impossible to do it, even if they invested money.

The current domestic two-dimensional market is so small, and there are only so many people who like it, so being able to support a B station is already the limit.

The vast majority of 2D fans gather on Bilibili. Other follow-up websites may be able to attract some people when they first start large-scale promotion, but they cannot retain them at all.

Because the new website does not have that kind of communication atmosphere at all. You should know that Bilibili is not only a platform for watching anime, but also the largest two-dimensional community, and its main focus is communication.

Even when watching anime, people also focus on communication. The pop-ups on Bilibili are very popular among users, and this has even been imitated by several other mainstream video websites.

Therefore, relying on its first-mover advantage and more targeted operations, Bilibili successfully completed its early accumulation and monopolized the vertical segment of the two-dimensional world.

The success of Bilibili has undoubtedly made Zhoushan Wenxue's company more attractive.

Before Bilibili became successful, Zhoushan Literature had already attracted a lot of attention due to its near-monopoly position in the field of online literature.

Singularity, owned by Zhou Shan Literature, was already the industry leader, with a market share of more than 70 percent at one point.

Shanda Literature, the only company that could barely compete with Singularity, had to be sold to recover funds due to operational mistakes of Shanda Group.

Shanda Literature was also acquired by Zhoushan Literature. With these two online literature websites, Zhoushan Literature's market share in online literature once reached more than 90%.

However, as online literature has become popular in the past two years, more and more capital has noticed this industry, so several new online literature websites have been established.

But Zhoushan Literature still holds more than 80 percent of the market share.

At present, the market value of Singularity alone is as high as 1 billion yuan, not to mention Shanda Literature, Under the Banyan Tree, and the female-oriented Hongxiutianxiang.

Although Hongxiutianxiang is not as dominant as Qidian, it is also in the first tier of female-oriented online literature websites.

Before, Under the Banyan Tree was the leader in the online literature field. However, with the development of time, online literature like Under the Banyan Tree, which is more literary, is obviously inferior to Singularity, which has long novels, exciting plots and rich themes.

However, at present, Under the Banyan Tree has been more inclined towards offline publishing and film and television adaptations, especially the "Under the Banyan Tree" magazine, which has also become a very popular reading material among young people.

The value of the banyan tree is also not low at present.

Therefore, if Zhoushan Literature's value in the field of online literature were to be released for financing, it would be valued at at least 2 billion yuan.

In addition to online literature, Zhoushan Literature has also started producing animations.

The animation of "Zhu Xian" became an instant hit, and then the animation adaptations of several other popular online novels also achieved considerable number of views.

Because many parents are quite critical of the animations broadcast on TV stations during this period, Zhou Shan Wenxue's animations have given up the TV channel and are only broadcast on Bilibili and Sina Video.

At present, it seems that the animations of "Zhu Xian" and "Shen Mu" have received good responses, especially the former, which is as popular as "Qin's Moon".

The copyright operation of "Zhu Xian" is much stronger than that of the original time and space. This novel is already a very popular novel.

Under the operation of Zhoushan Literature, not only have online games and web games been launched one after another and achieved considerable success, but publishing, comics, and film and television adaptations are also being carried out simultaneously.

There have always been rumors about a TV series adaptation of "Zhu Xian", but because it was temporarily suppressed by Liu Zhou, it has not been launched so quickly.

Therefore, with the joint promotion of Zhoushan Literature, Golden Harvest Group and Sina Group, "Zhu Xian" has become much more famous.

In addition, the quality of the "Zhu Xian" animation is also good, so its popularity after it was launched is no less than that of "The Legend of Qin".

Now, in addition to "Zhu Xian" and "Shen Mu", animated adaptations of popular novels such as "Fights Break Sphere", "Douluo Dalu" and "Stellar Change" have also been put on the agenda.

In addition to the animation field, Zhoushan Literature also has a comics platform, but it has not yet been developed and the company needs to continue investing money in it.

But the Internet industry does not care whether your company is profitable or not; it only cares about your market share.

The market share of Zhoushan Literature's comic platform is still good. This is not only limited to comic adaptations of online novels, but also publishes original comics from other authors.

However, because the comic platform has not yet found a profit model, it is not well-known, but it does not mean that its value is low.

(End of this chapter)